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3232Aviatrix Amy Johnson and the Flight to Australiahttp://scihi.org/aviatrix-amy-johnson-australia/
http://scihi.org/aviatrix-amy-johnson-australia/#commentsFri, 24 May 2019 09:10:00 +0000http://blog.yovisto.com/?p=186On May 24, 1930, pioneering English aviatrix Ami Johnson safely landed in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia after a 18.000km flight, becoming the first woman pilot to fly solo from England to Australia. Amy Johnson – Early Years Amy Johnson was an enthusiastic sportswoman who played hockey and cricket. At the age of 14 she lost several front teeth to a cricket ball. Since she came from a not incapable family – her father was a successful fishmonger – the family could afford expensive dentists, and Amy received good artificial teeth. Nevertheless, she felt disfigured and her self-confidence suffered. This is often seen as

On May 24, 1930, pioneering English aviatrixAmi Johnson safely landed in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia after a 18.000km flight, becoming the first woman pilot to fly solo from England to Australia.

Amy Johnson – Early Years

Amy Johnson was an enthusiastic sportswoman who played hockey and cricket. At the age of 14 she lost several front teeth to a cricket ball. Since she came from a not incapable family – her father was a successful fishmonger – the family could afford expensive dentists, and Amy received good artificial teeth. Nevertheless, she felt disfigured and her self-confidence suffered. This is often seen as the cause of the depression and hypersensitivity she later suffered from. Amy Johnson studied at the University of Sheffield. After her Bachelor of Arts she went to London, where the shy young woman took a job as a secretary, later in an advertising agency. In the winter of 1928/29 she began her flying lessons at the London Aeroplane Club. One hour cost 5 pounds, which was her weekly wage.

The First Solo Flight

On 9 June 1929 she made her first solo flight, and in August she obtained her pilot’s licence. Unlike other female pilots of her time, Amy Johnson was also interested in mechanics and maintained and repaired her aircraft herself. Since her work as a secretary did not satisfy her, she immediately agreed when the head of the airport mechanics wanted to hire her as an apprentice mechanic. She was the first woman in Great Britain to take her exam as an aircraft mechanic in December 1929. Her dream was to become a professional pilot – but at that time nobody trusted a woman’s flying skills.

Something Spectacular

Thanks to the financial support of her father, she was able to quit her job as a secretary and take all the time she needed to pass the exams for the B certificate (private pilot). To gain recognition, she planned something spectacular: She wanted to fly solo to Australia and beat Bert Hinkler‘s record of 1928 days at 15½ With her father’s money she bought a single engine Gypsy Moth from de Havilland, painted it green and christened the machine, now on display in London’s Science Museum, after the name of her father’s company Jason. The competition for sponsors for daring flying ventures was extremely fierce in the late 1920s and early 1930s. After many efforts and setbacks, the British oil entrepreneur Lord Wakefield finally showed himself willing to bear half of the costs and provide fuel during the stage stops. Amy Johnson meticulously prepared her flight. On 5 May 1930 she took off from Croydon Airport in her Gypsy Moth. As she was still completely unknown at that time, only her father and a few fellow pilots were present at the take-off – the press did not want to know anything about the inexperienced pilot, whose longest distance to date had been 237 km from London to Kingston upon Hull.

The Taurus Mountains

Looking back, Johnson wrote that she had been very naive and far underestimated the dangers of adventure. From London to Istanbul there were no problems. In her logbook, Amy Johnson only complained about the petrol fumes flowing from the auxiliary tanks installed instead of the passenger seat. On the third day after the start she met the first serious challenge: The Taurus Mountains were 3600 m high, while her heavily loaded plane could only climb safely up to 3300 m. The Taurus Mountains were the highest mountains in the world. After careful searching in the fog, she finally found the railway line of the Baghdad Railway, along which she flew, before finally landing relieved in Aleppo, Syria.

From Bagdad to Allahabad – The Flying Secretary

The next stage was to lead her to Baghdad, but shortly before the finish she was caught in a sandstorm. Johnson saw nothing and her Gypsy Moth was not equipped for blind flying. The wind drove her into the desert. Finally, for safety reasons, she landed in the middle of the desert, hoping not to get caught in deep sand. After three hours of waiting, the storm subsided and she was able to fly on. In Baghdad she had no more strength to carry out the maintenance work herself and was overjoyed when her Imperial Airways mechanic took over. When she arrived in Karachi the following day, she had already undercut Australian aviation pioneer Bert Hinkler by two days. Suddenly the “Flying Secretary” became known, and the press was rife about reports about her flight. She was very surprised when she arrived in Allahabad and was received by a group of journalists.

From Rangoon to Darwin

From Rangoon the route went to Singapore. Over the sea between Singapore and Java, she was again caught in a storm from which she could not get out for six hours. When she arrived in Java, she had to make an emergency landing again due to the damaged wings in the storm. In the absence of any other material, she repaired the torn fabric with adhesive strips. After Java, the Timor Sea, feared by all pilots, lay ahead of her: 800 km above the water. In order not to fall asleep, she sang until she reached Melville Island off the Australian continent. Amy Johnson landed in Darwin on 24 May without any further problems. It had taken her four days longer to fly than Bert Hinkler. Nevertheless, this flight made her a star among the female pilots. Two pop songs were even composed in her honour. The shy Amy Johnson was handed from hand to hand to receive gifts and honours, to give lectures and write reports. Soon the hustle and bustle became too much for her. When she learned from her father that he had signed an exclusive contract in her name with the Daily Mail, she suffered a nervous breakdown.

Further Achievements

Amy Johnson escaped into the air. In July1931, Johnson and her co-pilot Jack Humphreys, became the first pilots to fly from London to Moscow in only one day. They completed the 2,830 km journey in approximately 21 hours and from there, they continued across Siberia and on to Tokyo, setting a record time for flying from Britain to Japan. The flight was completed in G-AAZV de Havilland DH.80 Puss Moth, named “Jason II“. Only one year later, the pilot set a solo record for the flight from London to Cape Town, South Africa in a Puss Moth, “G-ACAB”, named Desert Cloud. Her next flights were as a duo, she flew nonstop from Pendine Sands, South Wales, to the United States.However, their aircraft ran out of fuel and crash-landed in Bridgeport, Connecticut. In the accident, both pilots were injured, but received a ticker tape parade down Wall Street.

Amy Johnson in India Image by Wikimedia User Dabbler

The “Flying Lovers”

Back in England it was unusually quiet around Amy Johnson. A previously unknown Scottish pilot named James “Jim” Allan Mollison had contested “her” Australian route in only 9 days and thus outstripped her rank. She got to know Jim Mollison personally in June 1932 in South Africa, where she recovered from a solo flight from London to Cape Town. Jim flew the same route, beating the existing record. The two successful pilots were already taken with each other at the first meeting, and already at the next meeting in London a few weeks later Jim Amy made a proposal of marriage. The British press celebrated the wedding of two of their favourites in July 1932. Immediately after the wedding, Amy Johnson-Mollison beat her husband’s record on the London-Cape Town route.

On 29 July 1932, Amy Johnson and Jim Mollison married.

Amy Johnson’s Last Flight

Johnson was promoted to a First Officer around 1940, when she joined the Air Transport Auxiliary, which was responsible for transporting Royal Airforce aircraft around the country. Only one year later, the brave pilot flew an Airspeed Oxford for the ATA from Blackpool to RAF Kidlington near Oxford. She went off course in adverse weather conditions and it is assumed that she ran out of fuel. Johnson bailed out as her aircraft crashed into the Thames Estuary. Her parachute was spotted as she went down into the water and it is known that she was still alive at that point. However, conditions were poor and the woman faced a very heavy see and a strong tide. Also, snow was falling and it was intensely cold. During an attempt by a near by boat crew to rescue her, she died and her body could never be recovered.

The circumstances under which the woman died are still quite a mystery. The exact reason for the flight is still a government secret and there is some evidence that besides Johnson and Fletcher, who attempted to rescue her, a third person was also seen in the water and also died. Who the third party was is still unknown. In 1999, it was officially reported, that Amy Johnson may have been shot down. Tom Mitchell, from Crowborough, Sussex claimed that “he reason Amy was shot down was because she gave the wrong colour of the day (a signal to identify aircraft known by all British forces) over radio“. Apparently, it became clear that it was Amy Johnson, who flew the plane only at the next day and Mitchell said that “the officers told us never to tell anyone what happened“.

At yovisto academic video search, you may be interested in a historical video documentation on Amy Johnson.

]]>http://scihi.org/aviatrix-amy-johnson-australia/feed/3Carl Linnaeus – ‘Princeps Botanicorum’, the Prince of Botanyhttp://scihi.org/princeps-botanicorum-carl-linnaeus/
http://scihi.org/princeps-botanicorum-carl-linnaeus/#commentsThu, 23 May 2019 17:00:00 +0000http://blog.yovisto.com/?p=919On May 23, 1707, Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist Carl Linnaeus – or after his ennoblement Carl von Linné or more fashionable in Latin Carolus Linnaeus – was born. Linnaeus formalised the modern system of naming organisms called binomial nomenclature. He is known by the epithet “father of modern taxonomy“. “Every genus is natural, created as such in the beginning, hence not to be rashly split up or stuck together by whim or according to anyone’s theory.” — Carl Linnaeus, Systema naturae (1735) (quoted in Ramsbottom 1938:197) Carl Linnaeus Background Carl Linnaeus was born in the village of Råshult in Småland, Sweden, as the first child

On May 23, 1707, Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist Carl Linnaeus – or after his ennoblement Carl von Linné or more fashionable in Latin Carolus Linnaeus – was born. Linnaeus formalised the modern system of naming organisms called binomial nomenclature. He is known by the epithet “father of modern taxonomy“.

“Every genus is natural, created as such in the beginning, hence not to be rashly split up or stuck together by whim or according to anyone’s theory.”— Carl Linnaeus, Systema naturae (1735) (quoted in Ramsbottom 1938:197)

Georg D. Ehrnet: Methodus Plantaris Sexualis (Systema Naturae, 1736)

Carl Linnaeus Background

Carl Linnaeus was born in the village of Råshult in Småland, Sweden, as the first child of Nicolaus (Nils) Ingemarsson (who later adopted the family name Linnæus), a Lutheran minister and amateur botanist, and his wife Christina Brodersonia. Linnaeus’ father began teaching him basic Latin, religion, and geography at an early age. After some difficulties right at the start – he was a rather sluggish student and his dissappointed father saw no other option than to apprentice him to a cobbler – Linné soon realized that academia might not be the worst choice and begged for a second chance, which was granted.

In 1727, Linnaeus, age 21, enrolled in Lund University in Skåne to study medicine. Professor Kilian Stobæus, natural scientist, physician and historian, offered Linnaeus tutoring and lodging, as well as the use of his library, which included many books about botany. In his spare time, Linnaeus explored the flora of Skåne, together with students sharing the same interests. In August 1728, Linnaeus decided to attend Uppsala University, where he met a new benefactor, Olof Celsius, who was a professor of theology and an amateur botanist. Celsius received Linnaeus into his home and allowed him use of his library, which was one of the richest botanical libraries in Sweden. In 1729, Linnaeus wrote a thesis, Praeludia Sponsaliorum Plantarum on plant sexual reproduction.

Early Works

In 1730/31 Linné worked on a catalogue of the plants of the Botanical Garden of Uppsala, of which several versions were made. In the beginning the plants were arranged according to the Tournefort system for the classification of plants, but Linné had more and more doubts about its validity. In the final version of July 1731, which he finished in Stockholm, he arranged the plants according to his own system of 24 classes. During this time, the first drafts of his early works, which were published in Amsterdam, were created. In the spring semester of 1733 Linné held private courses in docimastics and wrote a short treatise on the topic which was new to him. He catalogued his collection of birds and insects and worked on numerous manuscripts. In 1735, Linnaeus went to Amsterdam to obtain his doctoral degree. Previously, Linné had shown Jan Frederik Gronovius and Isaac Lawson some of his manuscripts, including a first draft by Systema Naturae. Both were so impressed by the originality of Linnaean’s approach to classifying the three natural kingdoms of minerals, plants and animals that they decided to publish the work at their own expense. Gronovius and Lawson acted as proofreaders for this and other works by Linné created in Holland and monitored the progress of printing. In the same year, the mayor of Amsterdam appointed Linnaeus head of his extensive botanical and zoological gardens in Hartkamp near Harlem.

Linnaeus and the Classification System for Species

One of Linnaeus` greatest achievements was the creation of a practicable classification system for species. This was based on intensive observation of nature and the description of living beings. He arranged the species he described according to clear and reliably recognizable characteristics, the plant species e.g. after the construction of the flower, especially according to the number and arrangement of the stamens and pistils (Linné’s sexual system). He gave names according to a fixed scheme, which is still valid today. Species are named in two parts, e.g. the marsh violet Viola palustris L., which was first described by Linnaeus himself. All of them, animals and plants, were given two-tiered names consisting of genus names and an adjective, the epithet, which together with the genus name designates the species. The naming of Linnaeus is still valid today for the formation of the species names (binary or binomial nomenclature) due to its systematic arrangement in the grouping.

Linnaeus himself has described over 7,000 plant species and over 4,000 animal species. Contemporaries of him said: “God created the world, but Linnaeus ordered it”. This large number of descriptions was only possible because Linnaeus sent his students all over the world. Many died on these dangerous expeditions: Johann Bartschat the age of 28 in Suriname, Christopher Tärnström on a trip to China, Pehr Löfling only 27 years old in Venezuela, Peter Forskäl in Arabia. Partially Linnaeus named plant genera in memory of his students and the names are still reminiscent of the death-defying researchers.

In Hortus Cliffortianus, Linné named the genus Sigesbeckia after Johann Georg Siegesbeck, who shortly afterwards became one of his severest critics.The drawing is by Jan Wandelaar.

Linnaeus is reported not being the most modest man of his time. He even suggested that his grave stone should bear the inscription Princeps Botanicorum (similar to the title having been granted to Carl Friedrich Gauss, the Prince of Mathematicians).[7]

Linneaus’ idea was to categorize everything hierarchically. A certain species belongs to a special genus, several genera belong to a special family, which is further summarized in orders, classes, subphyla, phyla, kingdoms, and domains. So, e.g., man is of the genus Homo and of the species Sapiens. We belong to the family of Hominidae, which is part of the order Primates, which belong to the class Mammalia, which belong to the subphylum Vertebrae, belonging to the phylum Chordata. Furthermore we belong to the kingdom animalia and the domain eucaria. This is the Taxonomy we use today.

Later Achievements

In the last years of his life Linnaeus was busy working on the twelfth edition of Systema Naturae (1766-1768). The attached works Mantissa Plantarum (1767) and Mantissa Plantarum Altera (1771) were created. In them he described new plants which he had received from his correspondents from all over the world.

In May 1774 he suffered a stroke during a lecture in the Botanical Garden of Uppsala University. A second stroke in 1776 paralyzed his right side and restricted his mental abilities. Carl von Linné died on 10 January 1778 of a bladder ulcer.

At yovisto academic search, you might start with a rather short but informative video about the merrits of Carl Linné: The Natural History Museum presentes Carl Linnaeus. For a more scientific approach to the works and life of Carl Linné, we also have an entire lecture of the Smithsonian Institute for Natural History on ‘Three Hundred Years of Linnaean Taxonomy‘.

]]>http://scihi.org/princeps-botanicorum-carl-linnaeus/feed/2Richard Wagner – Genius and Megalomaniahttp://scihi.org/richard-wagner-genius-megalomania/
http://scihi.org/richard-wagner-genius-megalomania/#respondWed, 22 May 2019 11:10:00 +0000http://blog.yovisto.com/?p=555On May 22, 1813, German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor Richard Wagner was born. His compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex textures, rich harmonies and orchestration. His music is characterized by elaborate use of leitmotifs, i.e. musical phrases associated with individual characters, places, ideas or plot elements. His advances in musical language greatly influenced the development of classical music and made way to modern music. And of course, Wagner counts to the most important German composers. However, opinions about Wagner tend to differ sharply. Either nearly unconditional worship or irrepressible aversion. Myself, I’m somehow

On May 22, 1813, German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor Richard Wagner was born. His compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex textures, rich harmonies and orchestration. His music is characterized by elaborate use of leitmotifs, i.e. musical phrases associated with individual characters, places, ideas or plot elements. His advances in musical language greatly influenced the development of classical music and made way to modern music. And of course, Wagner counts to the most important German composers. However, opinions about Wagner tend to differ sharply. Either nearly unconditional worship or irrepressible aversion. Myself, I’m somehow in between. On the one hand, I deeply admire his works, although there are beyond my comprehension. On the other hand, I can’t tolerate many of his opinions and especially I don’t like the rites how many people are celebrating their ‘Maestro’, esp. in Bayreuth.

“The oldest, truest, most beautiful organ of music, the origin to which alone our music owes its being, is the human voice.”– Richard Wagner, Opera and Drama (1851)

The Early Life of Richard Wagner

Richard Wilhelm Wagner was born in Leipzig, Germany, as the ninth child of Carl Friedrich Wagner, a clerk in the Leipzig police service, and his wife Johanna Rosine, the daughter of a baker. Unfortunately, Wagner’s father died of typhus only six months after Richard’s birth, after which Johanna began living with Carl’s friend, the actor and playwright Ludwig Geyer in Dresden. Until Richard Wagner was age 14, he most likely had no idea that Geyer was not his biological father, because he was only known by the name Richard Wilhelm Wagner. Young Richard Wagner entertained ambitions to be a playwright, and first became interested in music as a means of enhancing the dramas that he wanted to write and stage. He soon turned toward studying music, for which he enrolled at the University of Leipzig in 1831. One of his early musical influences was Ludwig van Beethoven. In January 1828 he first heard Beethoven’s 7th Symphony and then, in March, the same composer’s 9th Symphony.[5] Wagner even wrote a piano transcription of the 9th Symphony, whereas he was also greatly impressed by a performance of Mozart’s Requiem.[6]

The First Opera

In 1833, at the age of 20, Wagner had finished composing his first complete opera, Die Feen (The Fairies), which would go unproduced until half a century later. Meanwhile, Wagner held brief appointments as musical director at opera houses in Magdeburg and Königsberg, during which he wrote Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love), based on William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, which was more or less a disaster. On November 24, 1836, Wagner married actress Christine Wilhelmine ‘Minna’ Planer, but only a few weeks afterward, Minna ran off with an army officer who left her penniless. Wagner accepted her back, but it was the start of a troubled marriage. Throughout thirty years of marriage, for the most part, their relationship was estranged.

Rienzi, Flying Dutchman, and Tannhäuser

André Gill suggesting that Wagner’s music was ear-splitting. Cover of L’Éclipse 18 April 1869

In 1840, Wagner completed his third opera, Rienzi, which was accepted for performance by the Dresden Court Theatre. In 1842, Wagner and his wife moved to Dresden to live there for the next six years, eventually being appointed the Royal Saxon Court Conductor. During this period, he wrote and staged Der fliegende Holländer and Tannhäuser, the first two of his three middle-stage operas. Convinced of his greatness, he continued composing and conducting, but meeting with little success. Eventually he became involved with the Dresden revolutionary uprising of 1849, the outcome of which made him a wanted political criminal, and he fled to Switzerland.

The Total Art Work

During this time Wagner was continually composing operas and finding his mature style. He envisioned the creation of the “total art work”: a conception of a music drama based on classic Greek principles, in which there would be a unity of music, drama, text, design, and movement. The subject matter of these works were to be the indigenous myths and legends of the German people. In 1853 Wagner formally began composition on the Rheingold, the first opera of ‘The Ring’ cycle, followed by serious work on the Walküre (part 2 of the Ring cycle), which was finished in 1856. At this time he was toying with the notion of writing the drama Tristan and Isolde. In 1857 he finished the composition of Act II of Siegfried (part 3 of The Ring cycle).

Meeting Cosima

In his private life, Wagner should find a soulmate in the form of Cosima Liszt, the young daughter of the composer Franz Liszt.[7] Wagner and Cosima first met in 1853 when she was just 16. When they finally fell in love in 1864, Cosima was 27 and married, while Wagner was already at age 51 and still married to Minna. After Minna’s death in 1866 and after Cosima was able to obtain a divorce from her husband, Wagner and Cosima finally married on August 25, 1870. In 1862, Wagner was granted full amnesty and received permission to reenter Germany again (except for Saxony).

A Shrine for his Legacy

“I fixed my mind upon some theatre of first rank, that would some day produce it, and troubled myself but little as to where and when that theatre would be found.”– Richard Wagner, Autobiographical Sketch (1843)

That year he began the music for Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Mastersingers of Nuremburg), which was completed in 1867 with the first performance taking place in Munich the following year. Only then did he pick up the threads of the Ring cycle and resumed work on Act III of Siegfried, followed by the final piece, Götterdämmerung, which was finished in 1874. The first entire Ring cycle ( Rheingold, Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung ) was given at the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth, the shrine Wagner built for himself, in 1876, over thirty years after the idea for it had first come to mind. He should finish one more opera, Parsifal, his final drama, in 1882, before he died on February 13, 1883, in Venice, Italy.

Like hardly any other artist Wagner has polarized, and up to the present day interpreters of different disciplines are engaged in his multi-layered work. In addition to composers who rejected Wagner, such as Brahms and Tchaikovsky, there were critics such as Nietzsche – and later Adorno – who not only pointed out the dangers of the “bewitching intoxication”, but also dealt with Wagner’s effects on the music of the future, indeed on the entire culture. Wagner’s innovations in harmonics influenced the development of music up to the modern age. With his writing Das Judenthum in der Musik he is one of the obsessive advocates of anti-Semitism.

At yovisto academic video search you can learn more about the great composer Richard Wagner and his work in the lecture of Prof. Eero Tarasti from University of Helsinki entiteled ‘Richard Wagner – Music History: style periods and aesthetics’.

]]>http://scihi.org/richard-wagner-genius-megalomania/feed/0Marcel Breuer – Master of Modernismhttp://scihi.org/marcel-breuer-master-modernism/
http://scihi.org/marcel-breuer-master-modernism/#respondTue, 21 May 2019 17:00:00 +0000http://blog.yovisto.com/?p=189On May 21, 1905, Hungarian-born modernist, architect and furniture designer of Jewish descent Marcel Breuer was born. Being one of the masters of Modernism, Breuer extended the sculptural vocabulary he had developed in the carpentry shop at the Bauhaus into a personal architecture that made him one of the world’s most popular architects at the peak of 20th-Century design. “I am as much interested in the smallest detail as in the whole structure. – Marcel Breuer Marcel Breuer – Early Years Marcel Breuer was one of the first students at the Bauhaus arts and craft school in Weimar, Germany. There, his

On May 21, 1905, Hungarian-born modernist, architect and furniture designer of Jewish descent Marcel Breuerwas born. Being one of the masters of Modernism, Breuer extended the sculptural vocabulary he had developed in the carpentry shop at the Bauhaus into a personal architecture that made him one of the world’s most popular architects at the peak of 20th-Century design.

“I am as much interested in the smallest detail as in the whole structure.– Marcel Breuer

Marcel Breuer – Early Years

Marcel Breuer was one of the first students at the Bauhaus arts and craft school in Weimar, Germany. There, his talents were detected early and he became a faculty member of the school after it had moved to Dessau. Breuer was first recognized by the community for his steel furniture and he managed to make his living from these designs. The Wassily Chair, also known as the Model B3 chair, designed by Marcel Breuer in 1925-1926 is one of the iconic pieces of Bauhaus furniture, which has been copied many times. Despite popular belief, the chair was not designed for the non-objective painter Wassily Kandinsky,[7] who was on the Bauhaus faculty at the same time. Kandinsky had admired the completed design, and Breuer fabricated a duplicate for Kandinsky’s personal quarters. The chair became known as “Wassily” decades later, when it was re-released by Italian manufacturer Gavina, who had learned of the anecdotal Kandinsky connection in the course of its research on the chair’s origins.

Wassily chair by Marcel Breuer

Emigration

Later on, Walter Gropius [8] assigned Breuer interiors at the 1927Weissenhofsiedlung and led him to his first house assignment for the Harnischmachers in Wiesbaden in 1932. The designer moved to London due to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany in the 1930s. There, he was employed by Jack Pritchard at the Isokon company. The company was one of the earliest proponents of modern design in the United Kingdom and Breuer designed his Long Chair as well as experimented with bent and formed plywood there. His career moved on with F. R. S. Yorke. Breuer had designed several houses with the English Modernist before accepting the invitation by Gropius to follow his teacher and mentor to Massachusetts.[4]

The Four Phases of Breuer’s Architecture

Breuer’s architectural vocabulary moved through at least four recognizable phases:

The white box and glass school of the International style that he adapted for his early houses in Europe and the USA: the Harnischmacher House, Gropius House, Frank House, and his own first house in Lincoln, Massachusetts.

The punctured wooden walls that characterized his famous 1948 “House in the Garden” for MoMA and a series of relatively modest houses for knowledgeable university faculty families in the 50s. This included the first of his houses in New Canaan, Connecticut, with its balcony hung off a cantilever.

The modular prefabricated concrete panel façades that first enclosed his favorite IBM Laboratory in La Gaude, France and went on to be used in many of his institutional buildings plus the whole town at Flaine. Some critics spoke of repetitiveness but Breuer quoted a professional friend: “I can’t design a whole new system every Monday morning.”

The stone and shaped concrete that he used for unique and memorable commissions: his best-known project, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Muskegon and St John’s Abbey Churches, the Atlanta Public Library, and his second house in New Canaan.

A Ski Resort in France designed by Marcel Breuer

A New Style of American Housing

Both designers created a completely new style of American housing, which was spread by their great collection of wartime students. The Geller House I of 1945 is one of the first to employ Breuer’s concept of the ‘binuclear’ house. It is characterized by separate wings for the bedrooms and for the living, dining, and cooking area. They are typically separated by an entry hall, and with the distinctive ‘butterfly’ roof. Breuer’s first two important institutional buildings were the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris in 1955. The projects were followed by nearly 100 houses in 30 years and he went through several design phases.

The End

Marcel Breuer passed away in 1981 in New York City at the age of 79. Breuer’s buildings were always distinguished by an attention to detail and a clarity of expression. He is widely considered one of the last true functionalist architects and he is believed to have shifted the bias of the Bauhaus from “Arts & Crafts” to “Arts & Technology”. Many pieces of modern, tubular steel furniture are still in use today, including the Cesca and Wassily chairs by Breuer himself. They are still in production and their origins can easily be traced back to the Breuer experiments of the mid-20’s.

At yovisto, you may be interested in a video lecture on ‘Architecture in the Early 20th Century – Modernism‘ by Kenny Mencher.

]]>http://scihi.org/marcel-breuer-master-modernism/feed/0Honoré de Balzac and the Comédie Humainehttp://scihi.org/honore-de-balzac-comedie-humaine/
http://scihi.org/honore-de-balzac-comedie-humaine/#respondMon, 20 May 2019 14:28:00 +0000http://blog.yovisto.com/?p=557On May 20, 1799, French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac was born. He is best known for his his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, which is reflected in his opus magnum, the Comédie Humaine, sequence of short stories and novels, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon Bonaparte, the period of the Restoration and the July Monarchy (1815–1848). Overall, La Comédie Humaine was supposed to comprise 137 novels and short stories, of which Balzac could only finish 91volumes during lifetime, which makes Balzac a rather prolific

On May 20, 1799, Frenchnovelist and playwrightHonoré de Balzac was born. He is best known for his his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, which is reflected in his opus magnum, the Comédie Humaine, sequence of short stories and novels, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon Bonaparte, the period of the Restoration and the July Monarchy (1815–1848). Overall, La Comédie Humaine was supposed to comprise 137 novels and short stories, of which Balzac could only finish 91volumes during lifetime, which makes Balzac a rather prolific writer, considering that he already died at age 50. By reusing already introduced characters in his stories, he created a connective linking everything together to a series. His goal was to “depicting all society, sketching it in the immensity of its turmoil“.

Writing against his Father’s Wishes

Honoré Balzac was born on May 20, 1799, as the second of five children to Bernard-François Balzac, Secretary to the King’s Council and a Freemason, and Anne-Charlotte-Laure Sallambier, who came from a family of haberdashers in Paris. She was eighteen at the time of the wedding, and Bernard-François fifty. His father, never called himself de Balzac and Honoré only assumed the noble particle after 1830. As an infant Balzac was sent to a wet-nurse followed by his younger sister the next year. When both siblings returned home, they were kept at a frigid distance by their parents, which affected the author-to-be significantly. From 1807 to 1813 Balzac visited boarding school at the collège des oratoriens de Vendôme in the Centre region of France. However, from sixteen years of age he left his native region to study in Paris. Honoré was placed as a clerk in an attorney’s office and enrolled at the Sorbonne where he studied civil and criminal law. But, against his father’s wishes he turned to a career in writing. As a journalist, Balzac wrote essays on various topics including politics which garnered much of his attention, while working on his short stories and novels. Extremely poor and living in a garret in Paris, he published under pseudonyms. These books were without literary merit, but he earned his living by them.

Giving up all Hopes to live a Prosperous Life

“It is easier to be a lover than a husband, for the same reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day, than to say bright things from time to time.”— Honoré de Balzac, Physiology of Marriage (1829)

Searching for ways to make his fortune more rapidly, Balzac next entered a series of business ventures using borrowed funds. But, these commercial ventures were also failures, leaving him with very large debts. Finally, at age 29 he had given up all hopes to live a prosperous life, he published the first novel signed with his own name entitled Le Dernier Chouan, a historical novel. Since historical novels were the fashion, the book was well received. But real fame came to him two years later, when he published La Peau de chagrin, a fantasy that acts as an allegory of the conflict between the will to enjoy and the will to survive.

The Human Comedy

In 1832, Balzac conceived the idea for an enormous series of books that would paint a panoramic portrait of “all aspects of society.” When the idea struck, he raced to his sister’s apartment and proclaimed: “I am about to become a genius.” Although he originally called the series Etudes des Mœurs (Study of Mores), it eventually became known as La Comédie Humaine, and he included in it all the fiction that he had published in his lifetime under his own name. This was to be Balzac’s life work and his greatest achievement.

Balzac caricature by Nadar in 1850

Legendary Coffee Consumption

Balzac counts as a representative of the 19th century realism movement. As a hard working writer, he worked on his writing continuously for long hours without sleep. His preferred method of working was to eat a light meal at five or six in the afternoon, then sleep until midnight. He then rose and wrote for many hours, fueled by innumerable cups of black coffee. His consumption of coffee is considered legendary. He would often work for fifteen hours or more at a stretch. He wrote numerous notes and revised his work obsessively. The characters he wrote about carried a realistic element in them, they neither were super heroes nor completely evil, they represented the everyday person. His characters also came from an array of social states and classes. His detailed description of the location of the story entrapped the reader making the story sound as real as possible. He wrote “The author firmly believes that details alone will henceforth determine the merit of works….“

“I am a galley slave to pen and ink.”— Honoré de Balzac, Letter to Zulma Carraud (2 July 1832)

Balzac’s Influence

Balzac influenced the writers of his time and beyond. Gustave Flaubert, Marcel Proust, and also Henry James were deeply influenced by the works of Balzac. He has been compared to Charles Dickens and critic W. H. Helm actually called one “the French Dickens” and the other “the English Balzac”. Also Karl Marx made ongoing references of Balzac in his seminal work “Das Kapital“. At age 50, only five months after his late wedding, on 18 August, 1850, Honoré de Balzac passed away. The funeral at the Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris was attended by “almost every writer in Paris.

At yovisto academic video search you can learn more about the daily life of the French people, esp. about the raise of the bourgeoisie, as also Balzac has describe in his Comédie humaine, in the lecture of Prof. John Merriman of Yale University.

]]>http://scihi.org/honore-de-balzac-comedie-humaine/feed/0Alcuin of York – Architect of the Carolingian Renaissancehttp://scihi.org/alcuin-york-carolingian-renaissance/
http://scihi.org/alcuin-york-carolingian-renaissance/#respondSun, 19 May 2019 15:16:00 +0000http://blog.yovisto.com/?p=191On May 19, 804 AD, English scholar, ecclesiastic, poet and teacher Alcuin of York passed away. At the invitation of Charlemagne, he became a leading scholar and teacher at the Carolingian court. He wrote many theological and dogmatic treatises, as well as a few grammatical works and a number of poems. According to Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne, Alcuin was “the most learned man anywhere to be found“. “And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.”

On May 19, 804 AD, English scholar, ecclesiastic, poet and teacherAlcuin of York passed away. At the invitation of Charlemagne, he became a leading scholar and teacher at the Carolingian court. He wrote many theological and dogmatic treatises, as well as a few grammatical works and a number of poems. According to Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne, Alcuin was “the most learned man anywhere to be found“.

“And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.”— Alcuin of York, Works, Epistle 127 (to Charlemagne, AD 800)

Alcuin of York – Early Life

Alcuin grew up in Yorkshire as the son of a nobleman. He attended the internationally well known school in York, mostly famous for its liberal arts, literature, and science, as well as in religious studies. He graduated, became a teacher and deacon in the church in the 750s. Even though he used to live his life as a monk, he was never ordained a priest or became a monk officially.

Meeting Charlemagne and the School of Master Albinus

‘Remember to care for the soul more than the body, since the former remains, the latter perishes.”– Alcuin of York

It is assumed that he met Charlemagne for the first time in 781 in Parma. He convinced Alcuin to follow his invitation to Aachen, where he was appointed teacher of a renowned school. Later on, Alcuin is believed to have said that “the Lord was calling me to the service of King Charles“. He was welcomed at the Palace School of Charlemagne in Aachen around 782. The school was founded by Charles’ ancestors as a place to educate the royal children. Charlemagne also wanted to include liberal arts as well as religion. Alcuin not only taught the royal children, but also the king himself and his sons Pepin and Louis. Alcuin managed to create a personalized atmosphere of scholarship and learning, and the school became later well known as the “school of Master Albinus“. Alcuin had a great influence on the young elite of the area and was already considered as one of the greatest scholars of his time.

Changing the Policy against Pagans

Next to his teaching duties, he took his role as a religious and political advisor very seriously and his ideas were highly respected by the emperor. Alcuin tackled him over his policy of forcing pagans to be baptised on pain of death, arguing, “Faith is a free act of the will, not a forced act. We must appeal to the conscience, not compel it by violence. You can force people to be baptised, but you cannot force them to believe“. These arguments seem to have prevailed, because Charlemagne decided to abolish the death penalty for paganism in 797. Charlemagne was known to befriend many of his men at court and they used to refer to him as ‘David’. Also Alcuin found himself on intimate terms with Charlemagne and the other men at court.

Carolingian minuscule, one of the products of the Carolingian Renaissance.

The Carolingian Minuscle

Alcuin made the abbey school into a model of excellence and many students flocked to it. He had many manuscripts copied using outstandingly beautiful calligraphy, the Carolingian minuscule based on round and legible uncial letters. Alcuin also developed manuals used in his educational work – a grammar and works on rhetoric and dialectics. These are written in the form of dialogues, and in two of them the interlocutors are Charlemagne and Alcuin. He wrote several theological treatises: a De fide Trinitatis, and commentaries on the Bible. Alcuin is also credited with inventing the first known question mark, though it didn’t resemble the modern symbol.

The Heresy of Adoptionism

Alcuin returned to England in 790, but came back to help Charlemagne in the fight against the Adoptionistheresy which was at that time making great progress in Toledo. Alcuin is believed to have had contacts with Beatus of Liébana, from the Kingdom of Asturias, who fought against Adoptionism. He upheld the orthodox doctrine and obtained the condemnation of the heresiarch Felix of Urgel. Having failed during his stay in Northumbria to influence King Æthelred in the conduct of his reign, Alcuin never returned home. He continued working at Charlemagne’s court and retired from his duties in 796. Alcuin passed away on 19 May, 804. He was buried at St. Martin’s Church under an epitaph that partly read:

The Carolingian Renaissance

During his lifetime, Alcuin wrote numerous letters that are now an important source of information concerning the literary and social conditions of the time and a reliable authority for the history of humanism during the Carolingian age. Alcuin was an important mediator of the Latin education saved in England and Ireland through the time of the migration of peoples into the Frankish Empire, which he taught to numerous pupils, among them Hrabanus Maurus and Charlemagne himself. Today, he is considered as the most prominent figure of the Carolingian Renaissance. The oldest collection of mathematical problems in Latin, the Propositiones ad acuendos iuvenes, is attributed to Alcuin. One of its solutions is the Alquin sequence named after him. Poems – including a letter poem to Charlemagne and the Aachen Court Society -, sermons, historiographical, biographical and theological works as well as treatises on rhetoric, dialectics and astronomy are also preserved. The greatest contemporary widespread impact was probably the revision of the Vulgate begun by Alcuin. At his suggestion, the so-called Alcuin bibles, biblical panels with the revised Vulgate text and elaborate illuminations were created in his Saint-Martin de Tours monastery.

At yovisto academic video search, you may be interested in a video lecture by Professor Paul Freedman, who discusses the Carolingian dynasty from its origins through its culmination in the figure of Charlemagne

]]>http://scihi.org/alcuin-york-carolingian-renaissance/feed/0Walter Gropius – Founder of the Bauhaus Schoolhttp://scihi.org/walter-gropius-bauhaus/
http://scihi.org/walter-gropius-bauhaus/#respondSat, 18 May 2019 17:28:00 +0000http://blog.yovisto.com/?p=559On May 18, 1883, German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School Walter Gropius was born, who is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture. “Art itself cannot be taught, but craftsmanship can. Architects, painters, sculptors are all craftsmen in the original sense of the word. Thus it is a fundamental requirement of all artistic creativity that every student undergo a thorough training in the workshops of all branches of the crafts.” — Walter Gropius, as quoted in Paul Klee, 1879-1940 (2000) by w:Susanna Partsch, p. 47 Working with Peter Behrens Walter Gropius was not the first architect

On May 18, 1883, German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School Walter Gropius was born, who is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture.

“Art itself cannot be taught, but craftsmanship can. Architects, painters, sculptors are all craftsmen in the original sense of the word. Thus it is a fundamental requirement of all artistic creativity that every student undergo a thorough training in the workshops of all branches of the crafts.”— Walter Gropius, as quoted in Paul Klee, 1879-1940 (2000) by w:Susanna Partsch, p. 47

Working with Peter Behrens

Walter Gropius was not the first architect in the family. Indeed already his father and great-uncle, who was a pupil of Karl Friedrich Schinkel, enjoyed this profession.[5] In 1903 Gropius began to study architecture at the Technical University of Munich, which he continued at the Technical University of Charlottenburg from 1906, but left without a diploma in 1908. In the same year he joined Peter Behrens‘ office,[7] where other architects, including Ludwig Mies van der Rohe [8] and Le Corbusier,[9] who later became famous, had worked alongside him. After working at Behrens for two years, Gropius became self-employed in 1910 as an industrial designer and architect. In the same year he joined the Deutscher Werkbund through Karl Ernst Osthaus. This experience really influenced Gropius. Utilitarianism in architecture is characterized by modern industrial design in which a building’s shape is primarily given by its function. In the early years of his work, Walter Gropius began working on collaborative projects like a shoe factory in Berlin. He was always concerned to keep the modern style combined with providing comfortable and healthy working conditions for the people laboring inside.

The Bauhaus in Weimar

But Gropius not only practiced his modern architecture, he also made several publications with numerous images of his style and future ideas on industrial buildings, which had a great influence mostly in North America. During the First World War Gropius served as an NCO in the reserve. He was seriously wounded during his four-year assignment on the Western Front and was awarded the Iron Cross. Gropius’ presumably biggest career chance occurred in 1915. Henry van de Velde, a school master of an Arts and Crafts institution in Weimar had to quit and recommended Walter Gropius to be his successor. Walter Gropius transformed the institute into the world famous Bauhaus school. Bauhaus was probably one of the biggest architectural movements and special in Europe’s history. Germany was just defeated in World War I and many architects and designers longed for a new style and new shapes away from the emotional designs of Expressionism to simpler and more rational works. Gropius was highly influenced by William Morris, who always stood for ‘simple’ designs that reflect the building’s function in any way. And indeed, the Bauhaus style lacks of any kind of ornamentation and transports a harmony between practical purposes and beauty to the masses.

Craftsmen vs Artists

“The mind is like an umbrella – it functions best when open.”– Walter Gropius, as quoted in The Art of Looking Sideways by w:Alan Fletcher, p. 129

When Gropius became the director of his school, he set his goals to design buildings for all without class distinctions, which also reflects the name of his movement, Bauhaus. It references to a building and a premodern guild in order to honor the craftsmen and to reduce the barrier between them and contemporary artists. The Bauhaus school soon attracted numerous renowned architects and later also painters and sculpturers teaching, practicing and distributing the movement adapting to the rapidly changing world of a growing mass production and technology.

Architectural Design

Walter Gropius and fellow architects of the Bauhaus completed several buildings in Berlin like the Sommer house and the Otto house in Jena, and raised the movements attention during the design competition for Chicago’s Tribune Tower.

The Bauhaus building in Dessau, Germany

Political Pressure

Unfortunately, due to a raising political pressure on Walter Gropius and his school in Weimar, the school moved at first to Dessau, and later to Berlin before being closed by the Nazi regime. Gropius successor as director of the school was the Swiss architect Hannes Meyer in 1928, who retired in 1930 and moved to the Soviet Union for the next six years. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe led the Bauhaus until its closure in the early days of National Socialism in 1933.

Emigration to England and the USA

In 1934, after National Socialist attacks on the Bauhaus, Gropius emigrated to England as the “Church of Marxism” and in 1937 to the USA in Cambridge, where he was professor of architecture at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. From 1941 to 1948 Gropius worked closely with Konrad Wachsmann, who began his career as a freelance architect through the house of Dr. Estrich and the Einsteinhaus Caputh. Among other things, they developed and produced the well-known General Panel system.

The Architects Collaborative

In 1946, Gropius founded The Architects Collaborative, Inc. (TAC) as an association of young architects, which should also become a manifesto of his belief in the importance of teamwork. One work of this team is the Graduate Center of Harvard University in Cambridge (1949/1950). His book Architecture – Ways to an Optical Culture is a plea for creativity and teamwork in the service of society.

Controversies

In between the years of its existence, the Bauhaus school went through a development of its own style moving straightly towards functionality. After the school was closed, its influence however remained in all thinkable forms of art. In the last years of his life Gropius was again frequently active in Berlin, where he built a nine-storey apartment block in the Hansaviertel as part of the Interbau in 1957. Not all of Gropius’ works were uncontroversial. Critics complained that he sometimes went too far in his efforts to industrialise and standardise construction: it was not the needs of the residents that determined the floor plans, but the course of the cranes’ rails; bathtubs were placed between the sink and stove; windows could not be opened completely; the copper house settlement in Finow, for example, would also speak neither aesthetically nor functionally. Gropius’ idea of a “construction kit on a large scale” laid the foundation for prefabricated buildings in the satellite cities of the world. On the one hand, industrial mass production made it possible to provide urgently needed housing; on the other hand, it made housing anonymous and created new social problems.

Walter Gropius died on July 5, 1969, in Boston, Massachusetts, aged 86

At yovisto academic video search, you may learn more about the development from Beaux Arts Complexity to Bauhaus Simplicity and where architecture is going today by Anne Tyng at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.

]]>http://scihi.org/walter-gropius-bauhaus/feed/0Joseph Norman Lockyer – a Pioneer of Modern Astrophysics and Founder of Archaeoastronomyhttp://scihi.org/joseph-norman-lockyer/
http://scihi.org/joseph-norman-lockyer/#respondFri, 17 May 2019 20:33:45 +0000http://scihi.org/?p=22571On May 17, 1836, English astronomer Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer was born. Lockyer is regarded as one of the pioneers of modern astrophysics and founder of archaeoastronomy. Along with the French scientist Pierre Janssen, he is credited with discovering the gas helium. Lockyer also is remembered for being the founder and first editor of the influential journal Nature. “The nineteenth century will ever be known as the one in which the influences of science were first fully realised in civilised communities; the scientific progress was so gigantic that it seems rash to predict that any of its successors can be more

On May 17, 1836, EnglishastronomerSir Joseph Norman Lockyer was born. Lockyer is regarded as one of the pioneers of modern astrophysics and founder of archaeoastronomy. Along with the FrenchscientistPierre Janssen, he is credited with discovering the gas helium. Lockyer also is remembered for being the founder and first editor of the influential journal Nature.

“The nineteenth century will ever be known as the one in which the influences of science were first fully realised in civilised communities; the scientific progress was so gigantic that it seems rash to predict that any of its successors can be more important in the life of any nation. “— Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer, from Inaugural Address as President of the British Association, published Nature (10 Sep 1903),439.

Joseph Norman Lockyer Background

Norman Lockyer became a British War Department official in 1857. After a publication on Mars-topography he became a member of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1862. In 1866 he made a spectral analysis of sunspots. In 1868 he discovered independently of the Frenchman Jules Janssen an unknown line in the solar spectrum. Lockyer and his English colleague Edward Frankland proposed to call the new element helium.

Nature

First title page of Nature

In 1869 Lockyer founded the scientific magazine Nature, which still exists today. Lockyer remained editor for 50 years. He was appointed secretary of the Royal Commission on scientific instruction and the advancement of science in 1870 and undertook an eclipse expedition to Sicily. In 1871 he was appointed assistant commissioner. In the same year Lockyer travelled to India for a solar eclipse expedition.

Astronomy

In 1881 Lockyer became professor of astronomy at the Royal College of Science. In 1882 he travelled to Africa for another solar eclipse expedition. He became director of the newly founded solar observatory in South Kensington in 1885, which he remained until 1913. In 1912 he also founded his own observatory in Salcombe Hill in Sidcombe in Devon. In 1887 Lockyer applied the Doppler effect to determine the rotation period of the sun and developed a theory of star evolution. He became vice president of the Royal Society in 1892. Since 1904 he was a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg. In 1915 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Archaeoastronomy

He is known as one of the earliest representatives of archaeoastronomy. After he noticed the east-west orientation of many temples on a trip to Greece in 1890, he also systematically checked the astronomical orientation in Egypt and found, for example, an orientation at sunrise on midsummer’s day at the temple of Amun in Karnak. He found further orientations to the star Sirius in Egypt. Lockyer published his observations in 1894 in his book The Dawn of Astronomy. In 1901 he determined the age of Stonehenge to the year 1680 B.C. [7,8] He assumed that the so-called Heel-Stone was exactly aligned with the sunrise on midsummer’s day and calculated the shift of the sunrise direction due to the precessional motion of the earth’s axis. An age of around 1800 BC was confirmed in 1952 by the radiocarbon method. However, he did not consider Stonehenge to be a “calculating machine” or a system for determining calendar dates, as Gerald Hawkins later did in the 1960s, but believed that it was a temple for celebrating the Celtic festival of May.

After his retirement in 1913, Lockyer established an observatory, originally known as the Hill Observatory. The site was renamed the Norman Lockyer Observatory after his death in 1920 at his home in Salcombe Regis.

At yovisto academic video search you can learn about ‘The life of a Nature paper’.

]]>http://scihi.org/joseph-norman-lockyer/feed/0Theodore Maiman and the Invention of the Laserhttp://scihi.org/theodore-maiman-laser-technology/
http://scihi.org/theodore-maiman-laser-technology/#respondThu, 16 May 2019 17:00:00 +0000http://blog.yovisto.com/?p=561On May 16, 1960, American physicist Theodore Maiman presents the world’s first operating laser at Hughes Research Laboratories, Malibu, California. Today, lasers are present everywhere, ranging from common consumer devices such as DVD players, laser printers, and barcode scanners to professional laser devices for surgery and various other skin treatments, or in industry for cutting and welding materials. Actually, it was Albert Einstein, who has laid the theoretical foundations for the laser in his 1917 paper Zur Quantentheorie der Strahlung (On the Quantum Theory of Radiation).[6] Laser and Maser Lasers have become a part of our daily lives not only in technical

On May 16, 1960, American physicist Theodore Maiman presents the world’s first operating laser at Hughes Research Laboratories, Malibu, California. Today, lasers are present everywhere, ranging from common consumer devices such as DVD players, laser printers, and barcode scanners to professional laser devices for surgery and various other skin treatments, or in industry for cutting and welding materials. Actually, it was Albert Einstein, who has laid the theoretical foundations for the laser in his 1917 paper Zur Quantentheorie der Strahlung (On the Quantum Theory of Radiation).[6]

Laser and Maser

Lasers have become a part of our daily lives not only in technical devices, but also in the science fiction culture that would not be the same without the simulated Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Actually, the predecessor of the laser was the maser. It operated at microwave frequencies and firstly after the laser was invented, it was called an optical maser.

The Idea Dates Back to Einstein

But, to explain the origins of the laser, we have to go back a few years. Albert Einstein published his work ‘Zur Quantentheorie der Strahlung’ (On the Quantum Theory of Radiation) in 1917 in which he explained the concept of stimulated emission. In his theory, a “photon interacts with an excited molecule or atom and causes the emission of a second photon having the same frequency, phase, polarization and direction“. In the 1950’s several scientists in the United States and Russia simultaneously developed the maser despite the skepticism that spread through the scientific community. Prominent physicists like Niels Bohr [7] or John von Neumann [8] criticized that the maser was violating the uncertainty principle by Heisenberg and could never be working.[9]

Maiman with his laser in July 1960

First, the Maser

In 1928 Rudolf Ladenburg succeeded in proving this experimentally. Afterwards it was puzzled for a long time whether the effect could be used to amplify the light field, since a population inversion had to occur to reach the amplification. However, this is impossible in a stable two-level system. First a three-level system was considered, and the calculations resulted in a stability for radiation in the microwave range, realized in 1954 in the maser of Charles H. Townes, which emits microwave radiation. Afterwards Townes and Arthur L. Schawlow, among others, worked on the transfer of the maser principle to shorter wavelengths.

Finally, the Laser

The next steps towards the laser were made in 1957, when infrared laser research began at Bell Labs, but soon moved on to visible light. It was then Gordon Gould just two years later to introduce the term LASER in his published work followed by years of lawsuits considering the right of the patent between Bell Labs and Gould. Finally, in 1960, Theodore Maiman was able to demonstrate the first working laser. This step depicted an important contribution to physics and beyond. The first laser – a ruby laser – was completed by Theodore Maiman on 16 May 1960. He first submitted a description of his device to the Physical Review Letters, which, however, refused to publish his manuscript. The equally high-ranking journal Nature accepted the manuscript and published it in August 1960, with the result that Maiman’s invention was quickly copied by other researchers in many variations. After Maiman, several physicists worked on improvements of his achievement and brought the laser to what it’s capable of today. Now, numerous of laser types such as gas lasers, chemical lasers, fiber lasers or photonic crystal lasers exist, all varying in wavelengths and their applications.

Semiconductor Lasers

The first semiconductor lasers were developed in the 1960s (Robert N. Hall 1962, Nick Holonyak 1962 in the visible spectral range, Nikolai Basow), but only practicable with the development of semiconductor lasers based on heterostructures (Nobel Prize for Herbert Kroemer, Schores Alfjorow). In the late 1980s, semiconductor technology enabled ever more long-lived, highly effective semiconductor laser diodes to be used with low power in CD and DVD drives or in fiber optic data networks, gradually replacing the ineffective lamp excitation of solid-state lasers as pump sources with powers up to the kW range.

Theodore Maiman

Maiman was the son of electrical engineer Abraham Maiman who worked for AT&T. Maiman’s father was an inventor who also improved the stethoscope. Maiman sr. would have liked his son to become a doctor, but he chose physics. Maiman studied at the University of Colorado and Stanford University. He was interested in technological devices at very early age, since his father was an electronics engineer and inventor. He studied engineering first at the University of Colorado and then at Stanford University, where he received his doctorate in physics in 1955. Nevertheless, he was not interested in an academic career, but rather in basic research. So he first worked for Hughes Research Laboratories, a California aerospace manufacturer owned by eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes. The company was then a hotbed of innovation that owed its productivity to military orders and a staff of exceptional scientists. Maiman first developed a miniaturized version of the measles, a precursor to the laser, and then wanted to concentrate light rather than microwaves. Due to discouraging reports from other research institutes, his superiors banned him from further laser research. However, his threat of resignation and private work on the laser led to his giving in and he was granted a budget of 50,000 US dollars and an assistant for nine months. However, since Hughes still did not support the development of the laser sufficiently, Maiman left Hughes Research Laboratories and founded his own company Korad Corporation in 1962. He received the U.S. patent on his work on November 14, 1967.

After the Laser

After his invention Maiman worked in the field of nonlinear optics and founded further companies dealing with the development of lasers and their applications. Maiman was awarded the Wolf Prize, the Japan Prize, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize twice, and was induced to the inventor’s Hall of Fame. He also published ‘The Laser Odyssey‘, in which he describes the long way leading to his invention.

Theodore Maiman died on May 5, 2007 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, at age 79 of systemic mastocytosis, a rare genetic skin disease..

At yovisto academic video search, you may enjoy a video lecture by Mikhail Kats, talking about the history and the functions of lasers as part of a small lecture series on the 50th birthday of lasers.

]]>http://scihi.org/theodore-maiman-laser-technology/feed/0I must go, the Fog is Rising – The Poetry of Emily Dickinsonhttp://scihi.org/poems-emily-dickinson/
http://scihi.org/poems-emily-dickinson/#respondWed, 15 May 2019 16:03:00 +0000http://blog.yovisto.com/?p=562On May 15, 1886, American poet Emily Elizabeth Dickinson passed away. Despite unfavorable reviews and skepticism soon after her publications, she is now almost universally considered to be one of the most important American poets. Emily Dickinson’s poetry is rather unconventional and unique for her time, in which she wrote. They contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation. Like writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson [6], Henry David Thoreau [7], and Walt Whitman [8], she experimented with expression in order to free it from conventional restraints. Many of her poems deal

On May 15, 1886, American poetEmily Elizabeth Dickinson passed away. Despite unfavorable reviews and skepticism soon after her publications, she is now almost universally considered to be one of the most important American poets. Emily Dickinson’s poetry is rather unconventional and unique for her time, in which she wrote. They contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation. Like writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson [6], Henry David Thoreau [7], and Walt Whitman [8], she experimented with expression in order to free it from conventional restraints. Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends. With a few exceptions, her poetry remained virtually unpublished until after she died. But, who was this extraordinary woman?

Emily Dickinson’s Early Years

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, as the middle child of Edward and Emily Norcross Dickinson in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her lively Childhood and Youth were filled with schooling, reading, explorations of nature, religious activities, significant friendships, and several key encounters with poetry. Dickinson’s formal schooling was exceptional for girls in the early nineteenth century, though not unusual for girls in Amherst. After a short time at an Amherst district school, she attended Amherst Academy for about seven years before entering Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in 1847. Dickinson was troubled from a young age by the “deepening menace” of death, especially the deaths of those who were close to her. She became very melancholic, when Sophia Holland, her second cousin and a close friend, grew ill from typhus and died in April 1844.

Discovering Poetry

When she returned to Amherst after college, Dickinson occupied her time with household activities. During these years she discovered poetry through the works of William Wordsworth [9] and Ralph Waldo Emerson, having been introduced to both by a lawyer named Benjamin Franklin Newton who had been in the employ of her father. Newton, who died of tuberculosis when Emily Dickinson was still young, encouraged her to continue writing poetry which had great effect on Emily Dickinson. Although, she was vibrant and hopeful in her younger years, she became more and more melancholy as time progressed, preferring to stay indoors at her family’s home. By the age of 20, Emily Dickinson had begun the path to seclusion that would define the rest of her life. The deaths of several friends and mentors had begun weighing heavily on her mind and the death of Leonard Humphrey, the principal of the Amherst Academy, and both a friend and tutor, furthered her depression.

They shut me up in Prose –As when a little GirlThey put me in the Closet –Because they liked me “still” –Still! Could themself have peeped –And seen my Brain – go round –They might as wise have lodged a BirdFor Treason – in the Pound –— Emily Dickinson, c. 1862

Isolated from the Outside World

In 1855 Emily Dickinson journeyed to visit her father who was a congressman in Washington D.C. and from there to Philadelphia where she met a Presbyterian minister named Charles Wadsworth with whom she would consult regarding her thoughts on life and religion until his death in 1882. By the 1860s, Dickinson lived in almost total physical isolation from the outside world, but actively maintained many correspondences and read widely.

Cover of the first edition of Poems, published in 1890

I must go, the Fog is Rising

Dickinson’s poetry reflects her loneliness and the speakers of her poems generally live in a state of want. Her poems are also marked by the intimate recollection of inspirational moments which are decidedly life – giving and suggest the possibility of happiness. The first volume of her work was published posthumously in 1890 and the last in 1955. Although Emily Dickinson has spent most of her life in her home, her lyrical oeuvre is characterised by enormous vastness. Emily Dickinson’s limited radius of experience did not restrict her work, but encouraged it, for she was able to transform the small and manageable world in which she lived into a big world through her imagination. Upon her death in 1886, Dickinson’s family discovered 40 handbound volumes of nearly 1,800 of her poems. Only a dozen of which were published anonymously during her lifetime, and the rest was probably only known to a few friends and relatives. Her cause of death is unclear; in Amherst’s church book there is talk of Bright’s disease. Emily Dickinson’s last words were: “I must go in, for the fog is rising.“

Though the great Waters sleep,That they are still the Deep,We cannot doubt –No vacillating GodIgnited this AbodeTo put it out –— Emily Dickinson, c. 1884

Today, Emily Dickinson is regarded as one of America’s greatest poets, but she was not recognized as a major poet until the 20th century. Although much of the early reception concentrated on Dickinson’s eccentric and secluded nature, she has become widely acknowledged as an innovative, proto-modernist poet.

At yovisto academic video search, you can learn more about the life of Emily Dickinson in the lecture of Prof. Claudia Emerson at Mary Washington University.